Facing criticism that fake news on Facebook aided the rise of Donald Trump, founder Mark Zuckerberg has strongly defended his network.<\/p>\n
Speaking on stage at Techonomy, a technology conference in California, Mr Zuckerberg said Facebook should not be held responsible.<\/p>\n
“The idea that fake news on Facebook influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea,” he said.<\/p>\n
“If you believe that then I don’t think you have internalized the message Trump supporters are trying to send in this election.”<\/p>\n
Some data has shown that fake stories were being far more widely shared on the platform than follow up stories debunking the claims.<\/p>\n
For an increasing number of people, particularly Americans, Facebook is becoming the primary source of news coverage.<\/p>\n
The site’s News Feed is specifically designed to show users content it thinks will be of most interest, creating what some describe as a “filter bubble” that reinforces a person’s view without injecting differences in opinion.<\/p>\n
‘Work to do’<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Facebook was accused of being anti-Trump after it was alleged its human moderators were favouring liberal stories from appearing in people’s “trending stories” box.<\/p>\n
While denying that claim, the site did sack its human team, instead relying solely on an algorithm to determine which stories were shown to be most popular.<\/p>\n
As a consequence, stories which were later proved entirely false appeared on the timelines of a large number of users.<\/p>\n
When asked about checks and balances needed to keep a company like Facebook in line, Mr Zuckerberg said it was about “listening to what people want”.<\/p>\n
“My goal, and what I care about, is giving people the power to share so we can make the world more open and connected. That requires building a good version of News Feed. We still have work to do on that. We\u2019re going to keep improving it.<\/p>\n
“On the community guidelines, I think as norms change and people want to see more news, I think we’ll have to continue to evolve the guidelines to reflect the value that the community holds.”<\/p>\n
At the same event, Mr Zuckerberg offered an optimistic view of Mr Trump’s presidency, saying that his goals of improving global healthcare and connectivity did not necessarily require the co-operation of government.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Facing criticism that fake news on Facebook aided the rise of Donald Trump, founder Mark Zuckerberg has strongly defended his network. Speaking on stage at Techonomy, a technology conference in California, Mr Zuckerberg said Facebook should not be held responsible. “The idea that fake news on Facebook influenced the election in any way is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":267171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[106],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n